Beach recreation has been a popular activity for centuries in many warm regions of the world, such as Southern California, Southern Europe, Australia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Islands. At the beach, vacationers engage in a wide variety of athletic and leisure activities, such as sunbathing, volleyball, running, swimming and surfing.
Losing one's keys or other valuables at the beach can pose a difficult problem, because beaches are typically covered in sand or other loose particles that can envelope and hide small objects. Beach grounds can be homogenous and expansive, making the later location of unattended objects difficult. Unattended objects may also pose a risk of being stolen, especially at busier beaches, and when at least one person in a party does not keep watch in an area near the objects. The risk of monetary loss from theft generally increases A) inversely with the size of the object, and B) directly with the value of the object; and factors A and B themselves generally correlate inversely with one another, though not always, in a beach recreation context.
Other public settings, such as shopping malls, also present unique challenges for shoppers safeguarding valuables. Generally, those challenges are mitigated by shoppers naturally keeping shopping bags in-hand, under their conscious control, while shopping. At times, however, shopping bags can be inconvenient and distracting to a shopper's other activities, such as continued shopping and dining. When too many bags, or bags that are too large, are in-hand, a shopper may need or wish to make several trips to his or her motor vehicle to drop off shopping bags, or arrange for delivery of some items through the store, to continue shopping and other activities in the area (e.g., dining and entertainment). Generally speaking, independently arranging a commercial shipment of purchased goods is more inconvenient than simply continuing to carry shopping bags and the other options set forth above—even when a postal office is located within a shopping mall—and, thus, users will tend to exercise those other options for managing purchased goods.
It should be understood that the disclosures in this application related to the background of the invention in, but not limited to, this section titled “Background,” are to aid readers in comprehending the invention, and do not set forth prior art or other publicly known aspects affecting the application; instead, the disclosures in this application related to the background of the invention comprise details of the inventor's own discoveries, observations, and other work and work results, including aspects of the present invention. Nothing in the disclosures related to the background of the invention is or should be construed as an admission related to prior art or the work of others prior to the conception or reduction to practice of the present invention.